Why is your inner critic so much harsher than anybody else's? Because it has inside information. It knows what you actually think, and it uses all of it.
Why is your inner critic so much harsher than anybody else's? Because it has inside information. It knows what you actually think, and it uses all of it.
If a child came to me talking that way about themselves I would not stand for a second of it. Self love is not standing in front of a mirror saying you are great. It is being less harsh. It is opening your heart to the fact that you are human, with crazy thoughts and fluctuating energy. I am not the most amazing human in the world. I am here and I am doing my best.
One thing to try: Say the next critical thought out loud, then ask whether you would say it to a child.
In this episode
(0:02) The inner critic having a go, and what self love even means
(4:49) It has inside information. It knows what you really think
(7:05) If a child said that about themselves I would not stand for it
(8:41) Self love is just being kind about being human
(10:58) I am not the most amazing human. But I am showing up
(13:28) Giving yourself space to be yourself without the criticism
(15:28) Maybe I am projecting. Maybe others are not worried at all
Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for listening.
Steven
The question this answers
Why is your inner critic so much harsher about you than about anybody else?
Because it has inside information. You know what you actually think, and it has all of it on file. Everybody else only ever sees your highlights, which is why loving them is so much easier.
The heart of it
Self love is not standing at a mirror telling yourself you are wonderful. It is being less harsh.
If a child said about themselves what you say about yourself, you would not stand for one sentence of it.
Space to be exactly who you are, mistakes included, is the whole of it.
Say something unkind turns up in your head about a stranger walking past. That does not make you a horrible person. That is a mind doing what it evolved to do, running scenarios to keep you safe. But once it has happened you find it very hard to look at yourself and say, I am a caring person.
I was not brought up with the words. I do not remember ever telling my mum I loved her, and I never once felt unloved by her. It just was not something we said. So the journey into any of this made my critic louder rather than quieter.
What actually shifted it was noticing the double standard. When somebody I care about makes a mistake I help them up. I do not stand over them listing it. And then I make one and it is, you should have known better, how dare you.
I am not the most amazing human in the world. I am here, I am showing up, and I am doing my best.
There is a moment from my mayor years that says it better than any of this. Two years of events, every one of them full of dignitaries I had never met. At one of them I admitted I had no idea what the food was or how to eat it. The person I said it to, quite high up, said they had no idea either and had been to McDonald's on the way. After that I made a beeline for them at every event.
That is the whole thing. Somebody let me be human near them, and it felt like being loved.
One small thing to try
Say the next critical thought out loud, then ask whether you would say it to a child.
If the answer is no, you have found the gap. You are not trying to argue the thought away. You are noticing you would never speak to anybody else like that.
Then give yourself what you would give them. It is fine. Everybody does it. Let us have another look at it.
Questions people ask
Is loving yourself not a bit self obsessed?
That is the objection, and it is aimed at the wrong thing. Telling the world how great you are is arrogance, and it collapses within days. Deciding not to kick yourself when you are down is a different activity entirely.
Can I just think more positively instead?
No, and I have done whole episodes on why. You cannot convert a negative thought into a positive one. What you can do is stop adding a punishment to it.
What does this actually look like on a bad day?
I come out of a room where I did not fit and start listing everything I got wrong. What I need in that moment is somebody's arm round me saying it is all right, do not worry. Nobody is there, so I have to be the one who says it.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
self-compassion · self-worth · acceptance
Read the transcript
So do you have an inner critic that's constantly in your head, having a go at you, like telling you
and knocking you down? And when you think about self-love, that inner critic's like, well, who are you to love
yourself?
That's a bit narcissistic. That's a bit overconfident, isn't it? Do you have that voice inside of your head?
Well, on today's podcast, I want to talk about that. I want to talk about how we embrace self-love and
how we dismantle that inner critic. and we have more of a life of freedom and maybe live a life
of purpose. So that's today's podcast. Embracing Self-Love, Dismantling the Inner Critic for a Life of
Freedom and Purpose.
I'm Steven Webb and this is Stillness in the Storms and it's a podcast that just helps you to see
life a little bit differently to hopefully have a little bit more inner peace in life. Now then don't forget
I've got a different podcast called Inner Peace Meditations where I will link to it in the show notes, but
basically it's just meditations that will help you to have more inner peace and more joy and just more
calmness in life and we all want that in this busy crazy world at the moment? Just seems like there's
no let up constantly. If it's not the if there's not the external world constantly barraging us with something,
it's social media, it's work, it's something's going on, There's no let up. I I long
for the days when news was just half an hour in the evening and work was just a so many
hours a day and you had so much downtime. Whereas now there seems to be no let up anywhere. And
that's not talking about the inner mind. So the external world doesn't let up. And the inner mind certainly
doesn't let up. You know, you lie down at night for just five minutes to go to sleep, and then
the inner mind starts. So yeah that's what we're talking about. So just before that I want to thank a
couple of people that have treated me to a coffee. You are absolutely awesome. Let me just go over there
a moment and have a look.
And there has been a couple of anonymous people and Paulo and Alicia and Mia. Thank you very much guys.
You are awesome. You guys help me to host this podcast to get the podcast edited and to
well get the equipment and things like that to up my game. You guys are absolutely awesome. And if anybody
else would like to support this podcast, just head over to thankyousteven.com and you can support the podcast. If you
don't have the spare money or anything like that to donate a coffee, you can always support the podcast just
by leaving a review. That makes a huge difference as well. So thank you guys. You are awesome. But let's
get straight on with today's podcast. Let's talk about self-love. What does it mean? How can it make a huge
difference in your life? And as always on my podcast, I'll share my story of how I learned to love
myself and how I still find it difficult now sometimes to love myself. So let's get on with this.
One of the biggest challenges I think in today's world is is our inability to love ourselves. It's almost like
we've got to love everybody else and we've got to give our love out to everybody. We've got to have
empathy, we've got to have caring, we've got to have compassion, you know, be kind, that whole mantra in the
world. But when we turn it on ourselves, we're often judged as narcissistic or overconfident and things like that.
But is it really that bad to love ourselves? You know, there is a real low confidence, there's too much
overthinking. There's so many struggles now, we struggle with meditation, we struggle with the relentless inner critic. You
know, stick your hand up, you know, I don't know what you're doing, you may be driving or something, you
may not be able to um but sticking I think you might go on a public train or something, stick
your hand up and everybody will wonder what you're doing. Anyway,
just metaphorically stick your hand up if you've got that inner critic that if you try to love yourself it
turns it all back on you you know No look I'm trying to love myself I'm trying to have a
little more acceptance for who I am and then it just goes yeah but look at you see what you
did last week see what you like And here's why I think it's so difficult to love ourselves. It's because
we have inside information, don't we? We know what we're really like, we know what we really think. You know,
we know what's going on inside of our heads. Whereas it's easier to love somebody else, because you only see
the highlights in their life. You know, you see social media and you see these other people, they're doing these
wonderful things and all that. You know, it's easy to love somebody else sometimes, much easier than it is to
love ourselves because we have all that inside information. I know what I'm thinking sometimes and my thoughts are
not always that nice. You know, if I see somebody walk past me and I'm like, my my
mind I'm trying not to do it now, but my mind might jump to something that's not that positive about
that person. Because that's what it does. It thinks things up. The mind is designed to think scenarios up to
protect you. It doesn't mean you're a nasty hireable person it just means your mind's doing what it does. But
because that happens, it's so difficult to then look at it and go, well, do you know, I am a
loving, caring person. Because it's really hard to push that aside, isn't it? And my personal experience, I didn't
have a family that said, I love you. And I can't remember ever saying to my mum that I love
you. You know, I'd never felt not loved for my mum, but we weren't a family that did that as
children.
I don't think I really had that other extreme that we had to be stiff upper lip and we had
to be really strong and all that. I don't think I had that either on the other hand, but I
certainly don't remember feeling like as if I could express my love for myself
growing up.
That makes any sense?
So when embarking on a journey of self-love and acceptance of who I am, my critic
just gets louder and louder. So
it's really really difficult. And how do you do it? Do you sit down and practice self-love? Do you like
stand in front of the mirror and go, oh, I love myself and I love my scars and things like
that. You know, I don't really know. But the way I've learned to love myself is just by been less
harsh on myself. You know, if a child came to me and they're talking about
some of the things they did wrong, I'm like a little kind to them. I'm like, don't worry about it.
It'll be fine. We all make mistakes. Let's look at it differently. But I don't do that with myself. When
I make a mistake, I'm really, you shouldn't have done that. You know better, how dare you do that? And
I think that's where self-love comes in. It's realising that you don't have to be so hard on yourself, that
you're human, you make mistakes. Things, it's not the end of the world when you make these mistakes and everybody
does it. But we just don't see it, do we? We think we should be better, we think we should
be perfect. And the reality is, we're more accepting of other people than we are ourselves.
And that's really difficult. And that's where I am. Mainly. I just don't seem to accept myself nowhere
near as much as I can accept other people. I can almost accept when they make a mistake, but when
I do it, how dare I do it? I should know better. And I think that's where we get mixed
up between self-love in a way that it
Should self-love be a narcissistic, oh I love myself and I'm awesome and I'm amazing? No, I don't believe that
self-love I think that's an ideology that just isn't real. But I think self-love just means
be kind to ourselves, opening our heart to we are human, we have
crazy thoughts, we have fluctuations in energy and feelings, you know, when we're really tired just, you know, okay,
we're tired, embrace that, when we're really stressed, we're tired, embrace that, Instead of trying to think
that we have to be this amazing, loving, awesome person that is just a gift to the world all the
time.
I just don't think that's realistic, I don't think that's possible. And I think this is what Buddhism mean by
the middle way. It's have that balance between, on
one hand there is times when I feel radiant inside and I feel like a massive empowerment of self-love
normally when I'm listening to a good 80s 90s rock ballad and I'm feeling really good and the sun's out
and we're travelling down the road. And I feel like this like heart orgasm all over. It's like, ah, this
feels really good. Easy to love myself then. But what about when I'm really struggling in a room with a
few people that I just really don't get on with. And I'm being critical of them and myself in my
head, and I'm feeling awkward. I leave that room and I immediately put myself down, say I've done a terrible
job. That's when the little bit of self-love just, it's in that instance, what do I
need? I need someone to put their arms around me and go, it's okay, Stevie. You're okay. Don't worry about
it. It's fine. I'm here for you. And that's what I mean by self-love. That's what we need to do
to ourselves. We need to somehow cuddle ourselves and go, do you know what? You're awesome,
you're cool, don't worry, we all make mistakes, it's okay. And I think that's what a healthy self-love does.
And it gives us the ability to make mistakes. It gives us the ability to try things and be confident
in the world. To walk into that room and go, Hey, do you know what? I'm not the most amazing
human in the world. And I haven't got the confidence and look at me I'm great but I'm here, I'm
showing up, I'm doing my best and do you know what? I'm proud of who I am, I'm proud of
where I am and I think that's the healthy self-love that we need to put ourselves on the back and
that's what we need. You
know, that's to me, I could give you 10 tips on how to have self-love but the main one is
how would you love somebody that you have a real deep caring for? What would you do to them when
they make your mistakes when they fall? You help them up. You're not critical of them. You don't have a
go at them, do you? You
hold your hand out. You give them a hug. You you just help them in the best way possible. And
that's what we need to do. That's what I mean by self-love
And I think the more you do that, the more the critical mind and the negative thoughts that come and
go will be, okay, there's a critical thought, I can embrace it. There's a negative thought, well that's just,
you can't turn negative thoughts into positive thoughts. I've done lots of podcasts about that, it's impossible. There's no thinking
positive all the time, it doesn't exist. You know, negative thoughts are not negative thoughts, they're there to protect you,
so really they're positive thoughts. But if they're there all the time, we miss the positive thoughts. So you can
head back to other podcasts in my podcast library to help you with that. I think it's one about a
train metaphor which is really brilliant about turning the negative thoughts into more positive thinking patterns. But
the main thing is go easy on yourself, learn to just have
a little um I don't know, compassion for yourself. That's a good way of doing it, Compassion for yourself. What
does that look like? And
when you do have this compassion, you create this safe space for yourself to play and be a little more
adventurous with yourself. When you have this, you know, how do you love someone entirely? You give them
the space to be themselves selves So if you were to give yourself self-love, ultimate self-love, what would that look
like? You're giving yourself the space in order to be yourself without being
very critical. You accept yourself for who you are so that's what self-love is. It's not about
telling the world you're amazing, It's not about blowing your own trumpet and saying to the world, look how awesome
I am and look how much I can love myself and look how much better looking I am than anybody
else. That's not self-love. That's arrogance and that's the confidence and narcissism that only comes with a fool
a few days later, if not hours. It's
about acceptance, creating that space. So
that there's the technique I would say is Create the space in your heart for you to be perfectly who
you are.
Flaws and all, you know, all the good stuff, all the bad stuff. Put it all in there into a
safe container. Jumble it all up and realise that's the beautiful beautiful mesh you are, that's the beautiful joy
you are, that's the beautiful human we are I've I've yet to come across a human that's not deeply
flawed and deeply perfect in the same breath. You
know, we're all trying our best. We're all doing what we can. We see others and we see them in
a way that they're doing amazing and they're winning out and they're doing this incredible things in life and they're
never making a mistake. They're making loads of mistakes all the time. They haven't got the confidence. You
know, they're wondering whether or not they should show up or they had a crisis earlier that day that they
didn't want to go or they wanted to cancel these events or things like that, you know, it doesn't matter
what it is in your life, but we feel like we want to run from things all the time. Or
maybe I'm just projecting maybe, maybe many people have got the confidence out there that they're not worried about any
of those things. But anybody genuine that I know worries about these things. I've yet to come across anybody that
isn't genuine, that when I look up and go, do you know what, I was really worried about this, And
they went, Oh my God, so was I. And it's so nice to have that refreshing conversation. When I look
up and I've been to many, many events in the past two years because I was the mayor of Truro
for the last two years and I haven't been now for the last two weeks because I've done my two
years and the amount of events I went to and I didn't know all these dignitaries and all that and
I would be there talking to a dignitary, somebody that I'd never met before and I'll look up and say
I I have no idea what that food is there. I've never seen food like that before. I wouldn't even
know how to eat it, let alone what it tastes like. And they look up and go, oh, me too,
that's why I haven't eaten anything.
And it's just like refreshing, you look up and go, well, you know, but aren't you hungry? No, we went
Mcdonald's on the way over here. And I'm like, and I can't say who this person is, because they're quite,
you know what I would say in the hierarchy of dignitaries, they're quite high up. But it was so
refreshing. I was like, oh, I can be human around you. So every event I went to, I made a
beeline for them. I'd be like, how are you doing? And I go Oh, I've had such a dreadful day.
It hasn't been this, we don't want to be here. It's like, oh, wow, you're human and I love you
for it. And I think they embraced the fact that life isn't equipped for us all to be,
feel perfectly safe and perfectly well. But if we can be ourselves in that space, that's
love, the ability to be ourselves. So embracing self-love is giving ourselves
the permission to be ourselves and completely accepting it. That's
pretty awesome, right?
It's so simple yet profound. How many of you genuinely give yourselves
absolute permission to be exactly who you want to be and
have a deep breath, that's my podcast this week and I hope it helps. If it does help, look, leave
a review. That'd be awesome. That's one way you can help me loads. If you want to download the five
simple practices for inner peace, you can do that by going to thankyousteven.com. If you want to help me with
equipment, editing and hosting of this podcast, so I can grow it and promotion of it, you can treat me
to a coffee. I love you, you're awesome. Love yourself by accepting who you are.
Flaws, joys, the perfect of who you are and everything. Take care. Bye.
